▲ The lawyer was laid to rest last night at a funeral home in southern Mexico City. He died at the age of 77 due to cardiorespiratory arrest.Photo Victor Camacho
Gustavo Castillo Garcia
The newspaper La Jornada
Monday, August 26, 2024, p. 5
Lawyer and academic Ignacio Carrillo Prieto, who as head of the Special Prosecutor’s Office for Social and Political Movements of the Past (Femospp) brought criminal action against former President Luis Echeverría Álvarez as one of those responsible for the student massacres of 1968 and 1971, died yesterday at the age of 77 as a result of cardiorespiratory arrest.
During the governments of Echeverría (1970-1976) and José López Portillo (1976 to 1982) The abuse of power by the authoritarian state occurred throughout the country
said the jurist in 2005, in a meeting with legislators of the then opposition.
Based on complaints from victims and family members, Femospp initiated criminal proceedings against former officials accused of acts of torture and forced disappearance, as part of the repression against political opponents and members of guerrilla groups during the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.
Among other relevant cases, the prosecution brought those of the heads of the defunct Federal Security Directorate (DFS), Captain Luis de la Barreda (1970-1976) and Miguel Nazar Haro (1978-1982).
However, the courts, as in the Echeverría case, concluded that there was no evidence to prove the defendants’ responsibility or decided that the charges had expired.
Endurance
in the Judiciary
In 2005, after Femospp had been denied the issuance of arrest warrants against members of the repressive corporations, Carrillo Prieto stated in the Senate that the arrests had not prospered. due to the conflicts of interest within the government and because there is a stronghold of resistance to change in the Federal Judicial Branch
.
When interviewed at the time, he acknowledged that there was social frustration over the results of Femospp, created in 2001 and extinguished in 2006, all during the government of PAN member Vicente Fox.
On that occasion, he regretted that the arguments and conclusions of the prosecution did not prosper before some members of the Federal Judicial Branch. “Either they dismiss them or they make superficial, banal and laughable resolutions, some of them two pages long. I even have resolutions that are two pages long, poorly drafted, poorly written and unfounded,” said Carrillo Prieto.
We have had to battle with various lordships, lordships of the first echelon, and then also with dissatisfactions of unitary courts, because there are some resolutions truly worthy of an anthology of involuntary humor.
he said at the time.
Carrillo Prieto was a lawyer from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), where he was also a professor at the Faculty of Law and a full-time researcher at the Institute of Legal Research; he also had a degree in philosophy from the Ibero-American University.
More than 500 investigations
Under his command, Femospp initiated more than 500 preliminary investigations related to acts of torture and forced disappearance committed against members of guerrilla groups during the governments of Gustavo Díaz Ordaz, Echeverría Álvarez and López Portillo.
The investigation into the detention and forced disappearance of Rosendo Radilla Pacheco in 1974 at the hands of the Army reached the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which in 2009 condemned the Mexican State. The resolution transformed the national legal framework in terms of human rights.
Another investigation uncovered the case of Carlos Castañeda de la Fuente, who planned an attack against Díaz Ordaz in 1970.
After a summary trial and without a proper medical examination, he was admitted to a psychiatric hospital for 23 years. Upon his release, Castañeda was left destitute, his mental faculties having been impaired.
